


all of the lights

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Christmas, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: The flush on Betty's cheeks tells him she’s a little bit drunk – which only partially explains why she’s lying on her back underneath Archie’s Christmas tree in the middle of a party.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 42
Kudos: 215
Collections: 6th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees, Home for the HoliDale





	all of the lights

“It’s been almost half an hour, Reg. It’s got to be done by now.”

“Bro, it needs at least another ten minutes. The cheese looks all weird.”

“It’s _never_ taken this long when I’ve made pizza with Jughead. Right, Jug?”

At the sound of his name, Jughead takes a long sip of his beer and shrugs. He’d made a bet with himself that it would take at least thirty minutes for Archie and Reggie to realize they’d never turned the oven on, and he’s not about to ruin everything with just ten minutes left on the clock.

Slipping off of his chair, Jughead crosses to the other side of the kitchen island, where Veronica and Josie are crowded behind Kevin, all three of them enraptured by something on his phone. Probably the Grind’em app, if Josie’s scandalized squeals and the half-empty bottle of sparkling rosé clutched in Kevin’s other hand are any indication.

He touches Veronica’s elbow lightly. “Where’s Betty?”

Veronica frowns, resting the rim of her champagne flute against her chin as she searches the room for her best friend. “I think she went to the bathroom…?”

He remembers Betty tapping him on the shoulder, telling him as much, but that had been right around the same time Archie was using heavy-duty oven mitts to put a frozen pizza into a cold oven, so he’d been a little distracted. “I’ll find her.”

Jughead places his empty bottle beside the kitchen sink and pauses, taking in the scene around him. He’d be lying if he claimed this was exactly how he wanted to spend Christmas Eve this year: in Archie’s kitchen, surrounded by people he’d only begrudgingly call friends, all of them in various states of intoxication.

But it’s his best friend’s first Christmas without his father. If Archie had asked him to put on an elf costume and go door-to-door singing carols all night, Jughead would have done it. His presence at a small gathering of friends is really not much to ask.

Even so, Jughead had only returned home from Stonewall Prep the day before, and is still itching to soak up as much time with his girlfriend as possible during the winter break – something that’s tough to do when she’s disappeared from the party altogether.

He checks the downstairs bathroom first, but it’s empty. He climbs halfway up the stairs to call her name; no answer.

When he finally wanders into the dimly lit living room, his heart skips a beat from fear.

Betty’s body is lying on the ground, flat on her back, her head obscured by the thick-needled branches of the Andrews’ Christmas tree.

“ _Betty_?”

To his immediate relief, her feet in their festive red-and-gold reindeer socks wiggle in response to her name. “Hi, Juggie.”

He drops to his knees beside her, crouching low to the ground in an attempt to see her face. “Can I ask you what you’re doing?”

“C’mere.” She tugs at his wrist, and Jughead relents, scooting underneath the tree beside her.

“Hi,” she says again, voice soft and breathy. Before he can answer her hand is on his cheek, lips pressed to his. She tastes like cherries and alcohol, like the sickeningly sweet Dirty Shirleys that Cheryl had mixed before disappearing into a dark corner to make out with Toni.

Pulling back, he strokes his thumb over the curve of her jaw; her eyes are wide, glassy and green and literally sparkling as the lights on the tree blink on and off above them. The flush on her cheeks tells him she’s a little bit drunk – which only partially explains why she’s lying on her back underneath Archie’s Christmas tree in the middle of a party.

“Hi. What are we doing down here?”

“Looking at the lights.”

Her fingers poke against his cheek, tilting his face to look straight up towards the ceiling. He can’t help but smile. From this angle, it’s easy to imagine they’re alone together in a cozy bubble of color and light.

His hand finds hers between them, and he laces their fingers together. “Pretty.”

Betty nods. “Me and Polly used to do this every year.”

Jughead squeezes her hand, a little ache unspooling in his chest when she squeezes back.

“Tell me about it.”

He shifts onto his side so he can see her, but Betty keeps her gaze trained up through the tree branches. “I think it was Polly’s idea first, like she was trying to hide under the tree or something. It used to make my mom _so_ mad because we’d get all these pine needles and stuff in our hair.”

She pauses. “My dad thought it was hilarious. He’d take a picture in the same spot every year so you could see us getting taller, like those notches by the door in Archie’s kitchen.”

He can almost picture it in his head: little Betty giggling beneath the tree, blinking up at the lights, maybe with a contraband candy cane held in her small fist. Jughead swallows down the sudden lump in his throat. “That’s really cute.”

“Yeah. We stopped when we were in middle school, I think. I don’t remember why.”

“It must be hard,” he says, “the first year without both of them.”

At first Betty doesn’t answer. So Jughead waits. His approach to dealing with the death of Betty’s father has been to make himself as open and available to her as he possibly can, but not to push. To let her come to him on her own terms, and accept those terms no matter what they are.

Sometimes he wonders if that’s actually the right thing to do. Because the truth is, she doesn’t bring it up very much. Even less now that they’re living apart. But he knows that she thinks about it more than she lets on.

“I miss them.” She says the words slowly, like she’s feeling out the shape of them. “It’s so stupid. My dad’s a horrible, _evil_ murderer. But there’s still part of me that wants him to be there tomorrow morning eating sticky buns on the couch while Polly and I open presents.”

“It’s not stupid.” Jughead turns fully onto his side, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with his free hand.

“It’s not like I even really want _him_ there,” Betty admits. “I just wish things could be like they were before, sometimes.”

He gets it. He’d felt the same way after his mother left for Toledo – it wasn’t that he longed for her actual presence so much as he longed for the life that he’d had. It doesn’t help, he thinks, that tomorrow morning the same scene from her childhood will play out with different people slotting into the roles: JB tearing into her gifts with an eagerness that Polly would have tamped down under her mother’s watchful eye; FP eating cookies on the sofa, not caring if a few crumbs fall down between the cushions.

“Tell me if there’s anything I can do, okay?” He leans down to brush his lips against her temple. “I want you to have a good Christmas.”

She smiles, catching his gaze as the lights twinkle around them. “You’re already lying on the floor with me like a crazy person. I think that’s enough.”

Jughead crowds in a little closer, looping an arm around her waist. “I would lie underneath a million Christmas trees for you, Betty Cooper.”

“It can be our new tradition.”

“Definitely.”

Letting his eyes fall shut, Jughead begins to lean in for another kiss, but the moment is shattered by the sharp clip of heels on hardwood. “ _What_ in the name of sweet Buddy the Elf are you two muppets doing on the ground?”

Jughead groans, though if there’s anyone who can appreciate a mixed metaphor, it’s Cheryl Blossom. “Chasing away the ghosts of Christmas past. Leave us alone, Heat Miser.”

Another pair of footsteps joins her, heavier this time, followed by a delighted laugh. “I haven’t done that since I was like, eight. I bet if you lay there long enough it feels like you’re on shrooms.”

Ignoring Jughead’s protests, Reggie is down on the ground beside him a few seconds later, grinning up into the tree lights.

“Hey Reg, Veronica figured out why the pizza’s not – hey. What are you guys doing down there?”

More footsteps and voices gather, and before Jughead can really process what’s happening, all of them are laying on their backs underneath the Christmas tree, arms and legs tangling together, squirming and giggling like children.

And it’s…well, _nice._ Even with Reggie’s cologne clogging his nostrils, and Veronica’s shrieks in his ear every time an ornament dangles too close to her head, Jughead feels stupidly, giddily happy. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got Betty gathered up against his chest, small and soft and warm, her heart beating gently in time with his.

Still. “Does _this_ have to be part of the tradition?” Jughead whispers into her ear.

Betty smiles up at him. “Not every year,” she says. “But it’s pretty nice just this once.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following prompt from the fabulous sullypants: _19\. Laying together under the tree, looking up at the sparkling lights and/or 37. Getting tipsy at a holiday party._
> 
> It got a little longer than my prompt fills usually do, so I thought I'd post it as a little Christmas oneshot. I hope you guys enjoy, and if you do, that you'll be so kind as to leave a comment! <3


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